Martin Esslin, Professor Emeritus of Drama, died on February 24,
2002 at the age of 83, in London. He was appointed Professor of
Drama in 1977 and served through 1988, at which point--age 70--he
was retired, as the law then required. Martin returned to Stanford
on several later occasions, teaching graduate seminars and
delivering public lectures, for which he was in demand all over the
world. His many distinctions included honorary degrees from several
universities, the title "Professor" granted by the Austrian
government, and the Order of the British Empire.

Martin married Renate Gerstenberg in 1947, and she collaborated
with him on many of his translations of German-language plays into
English. Renate died a little more than a year after her husband.
They are survived by their daughter Monica, who lives in
London.

Martin was born Julius Pereszlenyi on June 6, 1918 in Budapest.
After the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire following World
War I, his family--Hungarian Jews--moved to Vienna, where Martin
received his education at the Bundesgymnasium II. In 1936 he was
accepted at the University of Vienna, where he studied Philosophy
and English. He also attended the Max Reinhardt Seminar of Dramatic
Art, where he studied directing, acting, and dramaturgy, in
preparation for a theatrical career in Vienna. Martin was in
Czechoslovakia playing a small part in a film that Reinhardt was
shooting there when the Anschluss united Germany and Austria in
1938. His fortunate absence from Austria enabled Martin to flee the
Nazis, spending a year in Brussels before reaching England.

Changing his name to Martin Julius Esslin, he was hired in 1940
by the BBC European Service. He wrote and produced radio features
on political, social, and cultural subjects, often helping other
refugees from Eastern Europe in the process. Before becoming Head
of BBC European Productions in 1955, Martin covered the Nuernberg
trials and the Berlin blockade. Encouraged by his friend Val
Gielgud (John Gielgud's brother), Martin moved to the Radio Drama
Department of the BBC in 1961, and became Head two years later.
Soon the BBC was commissioning hundreds of radio plays annually,
including works by avant-garde dramatists such as Samuel Beckett,
John Arden, Harold Pinter, Tom Stoppard, and many others. While
working at the BBC, Martin tirelessly supported theatre and theatre
artists, serving on Arts Councils, helping writers receive
bursaries, and advising standard and experimental theatre companies
on their repertory.

Although not by profession a university man, Martin drew the
interest of the academy through a series of groundbreaking books,
beginning in 1959 with Brecht: A Choice of Evils, followed
by The Theatre of the Absurd (1961), which John Calder's
obituary in The Guardian identified as the most influential
book on theatre in the 1960s; The Genius of the German
Theatre (1968), and Pinter: The Playwright (1970).
Appointed Professor of Theater at Florida State University in 1969,
Martin came to Stanford in 1977, the same year he left the BBC. A
popular teacher and strong supporter of the arts at Stanford,
Martin continued his scholarly interests, producing important books
on Artaud (1977); on dramaturgy and the semiotics of performance
(The Anatomy of Drama in 1977; The Field of Drama in
1987); analyses of the mass media (Mediations in 1980;
The Age of Television in 1981), and near the end of his
life, his memoirs. He wrote reviews and commentaries for newspapers
in several languages, contributed to many volumes and
encyclopedias, and published numerous articles in literary and
scholarly journals. Although he spoke all over the world, at
universities, conferences, on radio and TV, Martin was never far
from live theater. While at Stanford he served as Dramaturg for San
Francisco's Magic Theatre, helping it become the West-Coast mecca
for new and experimental plays.

Martin's many talents and tireless energy reflected a
complicated mix of Wunderkind, artist, journalist, scholar,
raconteur, and ultimately, survivor, who used his considerable wits
to full--and often dazzling--advantage. Although a very learned
man, Martin had no time for intellectual obfuscation. He tackled
big topics, and wrote about them clearly and in an intellectually
compelling fashion. His lectures had comparable depth and clarity;
even when fashioned on the spot, they were always a
tour-de-force. While in no way religious, Martin did like to
tell the story about the chairwoman of a Catholic society in a
small American town where he spoke, who came up afterwards to let
him know "You're just the kind of man we need in the church."

Martin last came to Stanford in the summer of 2001, seven months
before his death. Although fighting the effects of Parkinson's,
Martin tirelessly engaged high-school students in our discovery
institute all afternoon, and the next morning, he delivered a
memorable keynote address for the Continuing Studies Program
conference on Eugene Ionesco (an old friend of Martin's) and his
classic absurdist play, The Chairs. Not only did the
occasion allow Martin to return to his favorite topic--the "theatre
of the absurd" -- but it also brought him back to Stanford, where
(as he told us that day) he had lived the happiest years of his
extraordinary life.

Mr. Chairman, it is an honor to lay before the Senate of the
Academic Council a resolution in memory of the late Martin Julius
Esslin, Professor of Drama.